Some Short Christmas Stories

by Charles Dickens

But their
fears were nothing to their astonishment when he came out with the
story that Old Cheeseman, "so long our respected friend and fellow-
pilgrim in the pleasant plains of knowledge," he called him--O yes!
I dare say! Much of that!--was the orphan child of a disinherited
young lady who had married against her father's wish, and whose
young husband had died, and who had died of sorrow herself, and
whose unfortunate baby (Old Cheeseman) had been brought up at the
cost of a grandfather who would never consent to see it, baby, boy,
or man: which grandfather was now dead, and serve him right--that's
my putting in--and which grandfather's large property, there being
no will, was now, and all of a sudden and for ever, Old Cheeseman's!
Our so long respected friend and fellow-pilgrim in the pleasant
plains of knowledge, the Reverend wound up a lot of bothering
quotations by saying, would "come among us once more" that day
fortnight, when he desired to take leave of us himself, in a more
particular manner. With these words, he stared severely round at
our fellows, and went solemnly out.

There was precious consternation among the members of the Society,
now. Lots of them wanted to resign, and lots more began to try to
make out that they had never belonged to it. However, the President
stuck up, and said that they must stand or fall together, and that
if a breach was made it should be over his body--which was meant to
encourage the Society: but it didn't. The President further said,
he would consider the position in which they stood, and would give
them his best opinion and advice in a few days. This was eagerly
looked for, as he knew a good deal of the world on account of his
father's being in the West Indies.

After days and days of hard thinking, and drawing armies all over
his slate, the President called our fellows together, and made the
matter clear. He said it was plain that when Old Cheeseman came on
the appointed day, his first revenge would be to impeach the
Society, and have it flogged all round. After witnessing with joy
the torture of his enemies, and gloating over the cries which agony
would extort from them, the probability was that he would invite the
Reverend, on pretence of conversation, into a private room--say the
parlour into which Parents were shown, where the two great globes
were which were never used--and would there reproach him with the
various frauds and oppressions he had endured at his hands. At the
close of his observations he would make a signal to a Prizefighter
concealed in the passage, who would then appear and pitch into the
Reverend, till he was left insensible. Old Cheeseman would then
make Jane a present of from five to ten pounds, and would leave the
establishment in fiendish triumph.

The President explained that against the parlour part, or the Jane
part, of these arrangements he had nothing to say; but, on the part
of the Society, he counselled deadly resistance. With this view he
recommended that all available desks should be filled with stones,
and that the first word of the complaint should be the signal to
every fellow to let fly at Old Cheeseman. The bold advice put the
Society in better spirits, and was unanimously taken. A post about
Old Cheeseman's size was put up in the playground, and all our
fellows practised at it till it was dinted all over.

When the day came, and Places were called, every fellow sat down in
a tremble.